


what dreams may come

by whitchry9



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dreams, Gen, Hallucinations, Lovecraftian, Sleep Deprivation, Stream of Consciousness, Unreliable Narrator, both the characters and the author are not sure what happened so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 06:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11179140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: He wakes up and he wakes up and he wakes up and he starts to wonder if maybe one of those times wasn't really waking up.





	what dreams may come

He's yelling, and he's not sure why, but it just makes sense in that moment.

 

But then the pain stops, and he realizes why he was yelling, but along with the pain, everything else fades...

 

He's dreaming, but he doesn't know it's a dream. It's impossible and mad and nonsensical, but dreams just work like that, and he doesn't question them until he wakes up. And he doesn't really wake up.

He fades in and out of dreams, with nothing more than a vague notion that they're not quite right.

But he doesn't know they're dreams.

 

He wakes up for real, maybe, he's not sure, and his breath is visible in the air and he's choking on something in his throat, and there's a roar of pain where his chest used to be.

He prioritizes, feeling around, realizing there is something in his throat, and he pulls it out. He chokes and gags and wants to throw up, but he doesn't, and it's gone.

He's pretty sure he's awake after that.

 

The air is cold, but he's not sure he is, because he can't feel much of his body besides the gap where his chest used to be, because surely the pain means something has been torn away. His brain helpfully reminds him of the gating mechanism, and he's not sure why he knows it. Or why he's thinking about it.

 

His throat is dry and scratchy and he glances around, because there has to be water somewhere. There's a cup on the table beside him, and he reaches for it.

 

“I wouldn't do that if I were you,” a man says, like he knows something Tony doesn't, which is probably true, because he can't remember the last time he was awake, or where the hell that was.

 

He probably knows lots of things that Tony doesn't, like his name, where they are, and why there's a _goddamn hole in his chest._

 

He blacks out for a bit after that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Torture is torture, as its name suggests. Tony survives it, but gives in. Or maybe not. He likes to tell himself he didn't, that it was a tactical decision, but really...

So he gives in and gets equipment, and wow, these terrorists are stupid. They give him, _Tony fucking Stark,_ equipment, and tools, and basically free range to do whatever the hell he wants.

Big mistake.

But it's good, it's great, because he builds himself a suit and plans to shoot his way out of there. Him and Yinsen will both make it out, Yinsen will go home to his family, and Tony... well, he'll go home and fix things.

That's what he does. Tony fixes things. He fucks things up, then fixes them, because that's the only way he knows how to live, has ever lived.

(Maybe it's not the best way, but it's all he's got.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

Yinsen dies, and nothing seems real. He burns men alive and torches the whole godforsaken place he'd been held for the past three months. It's all on autopilot, like sleepwalking, going through the motions, and it terrifies him. Well, he realizes it should terrify him, and perhaps that's the most terrifying thing of all.

 

He feels alive for a split second when he's plummeting towards the earth, and he thinks it will be the last thing he ever feels, but then there's pain and sand everywhere.

 

He decides he fucking hates sand as he trudges through it, hill after hill, endless piles of sand. He hallucinates, things ranging from rescue to recapture, even though he knows they are all dead and cannot come for him. He sees his father berating him for the failure he's become, his mother urging him to keep going. He sees Jarvis, and he nearly stumbles and falls in his rush to reach him.

He never does though.

 

He thinks the helicopter is a hallucination too, until Rhodey pulls him in for a hug and it feels real, it's real, oh god it's real.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The things he does when he gets back seem kind of crazy, even to him, which everyone tells him. Which means it must be real, because he's never had a dream where people keep telling him he needs to be more realistic and pay attention to the stock prices. Surely even he couldn't dream up something that boring.

 

 

He shuts down weapon production and instead makes himself into the only weapon they'll ever need, red and gold and glowing blue at the centre.

 

There's still the sneaking suspicion that something isn't right, something poking at the back of his brain, but he can't seem to work it out. After all, there are so many things that seem different, three months later after the world moved on without him. He ignores it and hopes it goes away, but of course it doesn't.

 

Tony didn't realize that his grandmother was the wolf all along.

_My Obie, what big teeth you have._

He's left on his own couch, an empty place in his chest where his heart used to be, cause he's pretty sure it's gone now, because fuck if he's ever going to trust anyone ever again, if he makes it out alive.

The pain reminds him of when he was drifting in and out of dreams that he didn't know were dreams. Now they make sense, in the way that dreams do when you realize they're dreams. _It's only logical to be flying kites under water. Of course. I see now how I could jump like a kangaroo. I understand how the laws of physics seemed to suspend themselves so I could make that time machine work._

 

Maybe this was a dream too?

 

He wasn't going to risk not waking up though, no matter how much he'd like to wake up and realize, _of course Obie wouldn't do that to me, how funny was that, what a weird dream, huh?_

Instead he throws himself across the room and somehow manages to put a stopgate heart in his chest with the help of his stupid robot, bless him. He doesn't wake up, but goes on to fight a monster in a suit after his own design, but bigger and more steampunk than he could have ever imaged. He's sure he'll wake up then, but doesn't risk it.

 

His life has gotten to the point where he has to treat everything like it's real, because dreams and reality blend too closely together.

_(Maybe he's still in a cave, dreaming of a world where he made it out.)_

 

 

* * *

 

 

He starts dying, and reality hits fast at that point. To top it all off, there's a mad man out there with electric whips run by something that works a hell of a lot like the thing in his chest that's killing him.

He knows he's probably going to die by arc reactor, it's just a matter of whether it'll be fast or slow.

 

(Slow, it turns out, because he fixes that problem, like he fixed the last, and he'll probably fix the next, he'll keep fixing until there is nothing left to fix, and the thought is both reassuring and terrifying.)

 

 

* * *

 

 

Aliens in New York? Dream, right?

Apparently not.

 

It's real, and at the same time so fucking impossible that he still can't wrap his head around it. He feels like he's sleepwalking through those days, as they track down the cube and figure out what Loki's plan is. By the time they realize Loki's opening a wormhole to the other end of space, Tony is almost certain it has to be a dream, because he's not sure how it can be anything else.

 

But when the aliens come, the Chitauri, then it sure as hell feels real. The screams are real. The damage is real.

So Tony does everything he can to prevent those aliens from hurting anyone or getting anywhere, and he does it with a team, cause apparently they're a team now.

Avengers. It's got a nice ring to it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

But space... space is disease and darkness wrapped up in danger, and Tony laughed at that before, laughed out loud, but he understands it now, because yes, space is vast and exciting and full of things that no one has even dreamt of, but it is also hollow and empty and full of absolute nothingness, and that terrifies him.

It terrifies him more than a cave ever did, than any person in a suit could, than any madman with electrical whips could even dare to dream of.

The inability to know terrifies him.

 

He doesn't sleep much after that, because every time he closes his eyes all he can see is the image of foreign stars and wormholes closing just before he makes it though. He dreams of drifting forever in space, despite the fact that he would die almost immediately from the lack of oxygen and extreme cold. His dreams have no respect for reality, only for worst case scenarios.

 

Even when he's awake, he is good at worst case scenarios.

 

He starts falling asleep sitting up, standing, walking, microsleeps that only last an instant and startle him awake. He can feel his grip slipping, and he wonders if it would really be so bad to just let go.

 

He hallucinates, although he doesn't recognize it as such at first. The problem with hallucinations is that they can make too much sense for him to recognize them as false.

 

In retrospect, he should have realized that the shadowy figure that mirrored him, but never spoke, should have raised some alarms, but it's just like the dream thing, and it's difficult to recognize it at the time.

One day he refers to it, offhand, with Steve, and Steve looks at him with concern. Tony turns back to the shadowy figure, who doesn't say anything, who never says anything, just looks at him without eyes.

 

Tony smiles and laughs and plays it off as a joke, but he knows Steve isn't reassured. They both know that Steve isn't reassured.

 

Tony takes sleeping pills and sleeps through the night for the first time he can remember, which isn't saying much, because his memory is shot to hell because of the lack of sleep.

When he wakes, it's gone, and Tony knows he should be relieved, but all he can feel is alone.

Rationally, he knew he was alone all along, but the illusion made all the difference.

 

He can't bring himself to take anymore sleeping pills. So he doesn't sleep. And he doesn't sleep.

 

He looks up and there it is, staring at him. Tony doesn't know how he knows it's staring, because it doesn't have eyes or a face, but he supposes in the way that dreams can be rationalized while you're dreaming, it makes sense.

 

_Hello again,_ Tony says.

And it nods back.

 


End file.
